Georgia baseball staying loose with dog mask dugout celebration: 'I just laughed when I saw it was a German shepherd'

A college baseball dugout in the postseason can be a wild place, with the presence of anything from a rally possum to a hotel luggage cart making an appearance to spark some unique celebrations. For Georgia, a new tradition has taken hold.

The Bulldogs have been wearing a large dog mask after major positive developments like home runs, giving players a temporary but somewhat scary appearance.

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The dog mask — which is of a German shepherd — made an appearance on Sunday in the Athens Super Regional after a particularly big moment in the game.

Freshman Tre Phelps came to the plate with a pair of runners on base and proceeded to demolish a 3-1 pitch over the wall to straight-away center field, an estimated 416 feet of distance. It put the Bulldogs up 5-0 in a must-win game against the NC State Wolfpack.

And out came the mask in the dugout.

A couple days ago, Georgia coach Wes Johnson and a handful of Georgia players explained the origin of the dog mask.

Johnson and the players are aware the mask is of a German shepherd (and they’re the Bulldogs), but it’s been fun for players all the same.

“Oh, we could have a whole segment on that,” Johnson said. “The guys just wanted a prop in the dugout, right? I said, ‘Hey, when did we become the German Shepherds? I thought we were Bulldogs.’

“The guys have fun with it. I want our guys to have fun. We have enough, you know, serious things in life we have to deal with on a daily basis. Yeah, that’s the dog mask. It’s a product of the guys came up with it. I let them come up with it. I just laughed when I saw the German shepherd mask.”

Fans will certainly be amenable to the German shepherd too, because of what it represents.

At the time of this writing, Georgia had already donned it twice in the second game of the Athens Super Regional against NC State; Slate Alford also hit a two-run home run in the first inning.

Georgia led 8-0 in the top of the fifth inning, positioning itself to potentially survive and advance, forcing a third game in the Athens Super Regional for the right to advance to Omaha and the College World Series.